My thoughts on The Internet of Everything Technology, Travel Tech, Voice Over IP, Internet Based Communications and Video.

Posts from October 2017

The reason may not apparent to many but it has to do with Microsoft and Skype for Business having the attention of MSP’s, carriers, mobile operators, as they are the channel partners for Microsoft and Cisco had nothing really in the cloud to attach Spark to in telecom.

This left them as a feature, not a business, so since BSOFT is such a player already with carriers, cable ops and mobile operators this helps Cisco get their cloud on better.

The reason? Born in the cloud baby..Born in the cloud. Broadsoft wasn't. They were a legacy telco's IP comms solution, that is now trying to get to the cloud. something Cisco knows a lot about, and which is the direction Broadsoft was moving but just not fast enough obviously. Now maybe they'll get there, but being born in the 2.0 cloud vs. trying to get to the 2.0 pure cloud model isn't a walk in the park, plus many of the Broadsoft carrier customer don't really care.

This is about buying market share, revenue and a team. Nothing more. How long it takes for Cisco to integrate, and how they use it to fight off Microsoft (they are not friends) is really the game here to be played out...oh, MSFT and Mitel...while that battle looms, the pure cloud players who don't have legacy approaches to have to work out of will continue to grow and prosper.

I’ve been a Dialpad user since the early days of Switch.co. Two years ago when I spent four months living over in Europe where I was running a few projects in the UK, while also keeping Comunicano operating from 8 and 9 hours away, the use of Dialpad allowed me to really work from anywhere. Prague. Vienna. Langenlois. Paris. London. Madrid. Lisbon. Montpeyroux. Les Baux de Provence. The Rhone Valley. Marseille. Porto. It didn’t matter. If I had 4G/LTE or Wi-Fi. Because of Dialpad I was “staying connected.” So if anyone is the poster child for the Anywhere Worker, I’m it as I’ve been doing that all my working life, from Press Boxes in the 70's to hotels, coffee shops, wineries and houses all over the globe.

Today Dialpad is entering the market in Canada. As someone who has spent a large part of my life working with Canadians, as far back as 1974, what is so appealing about what Dialpad is doing is their approach to going big in the Great White North.

For starters, they are bringing their bold, brash and disruptive approach of the Anywhere Worker to Canada big time. Beyond launching service in Canada today, they are also putting their money where their mouth is. They put an office smack dab in the hub of startup land in Vancouver and tapped longtime friend Erik Lagerway, who I have known since his Counterpath days, to lead the team. To be totally transparent, I helped Craig Walker land Erik, as Erik was already out of HookFlash and looking for his next adventure. But Erik isn’t the only VoIP industry insider helping Dialpad soar.

So am I.

And I’m doing it at the request of Craig Walker, who has been a close friend since his Dialpad 1.0 days, and then again during our time together working on Grand Central. You see working with visionaries, and game changers are really all I know how to do, going back as far as 1974 with the Philadelphia Wings, and then again in 1976 when I joined the Philadelphia Flyers organization’s startup “Hockey Central” forever changing the face of amateur hockey in the Delaware Valley.

Two of the big benefits that Dialpad is bringing to Canada is flat rate calling. That means, NO LONG DISTANCE. The second significant advantage is the company’s approach to roaming. They eliminate it when you use the service connected to WI-FI or over LTE on your mobile devices.

When I lived in Europe, almost all of my calls were on Dialpad, even calls to local numbers. I barely used any minutes on my local SIMs, and had the benefit of an SMS reachable number in the USA much like Google Voice, but better as it meets most banks verification procedures. Since then on three trips to Europe, leaving home with Dialpad is like still being home, while working anywhere.

For me, working with Dialpad is not an end of Comunicano. If anything it’s a rebirth of sorts, moving me into a role of both strategist and operator. The last time I did that was with the Upper Deck Company, and on my watch, the company went from 27 million a year in sales to close to 300 million, with Comms, Events, and Sponsorship driving a big part of that, all in 18 months.

So with Dialpad it’s a homecoming of sorts as Craig, and Vincent Paquet, who like Craig co-founded GrandCentral are both friends first to me, and like hockey players reunited, we all know each other’s moves so well. The same applies to Erik too.

The band is back together, and just like at GrandCentral, it’s game on, and we’re playing for keeps.

I have to admit; I miss the days of VON vs. IT Expo vs. just about any other VoIP focused conference. I also miss DEMO, the three-day "what's new" show in tech. Shows like VON were more than "hot rod shows" the term coined by pal Chip Wilcox, the Chief Product Officer at Temasys.

Back in the VON, the bloggers had a panel, which I first suggested to VON leader Jeff Pulver, and that I moderated. I remember the first one, which had Om Malik on via an attempted video feed, Christine Herron who first asked if I was only putting her on stage because she was a woman--no, it's because she is darn smart. There were others like Ted Wallingford, Russell Shaw, Martin Geddes and of course Alec Saunders, who is now back at Microsoft,

At one VON I hosted a dinner at Flemmings in Boston, shipping in wines from my collection. As time went on the "Andy Wine Dinners," migrated from VON to ITEXPO, and were even convened at DEMO, entertaining the minds and thirsts of many. In essence, they became the "must attend" gathering of the tech elite.

The first DEMO dinner was 11 years or so ago, in San Diego, at my good friend and longtime wine pal, Steve Pagano's hotel, the San Diego Marriott. Steve had just opened up a new restaurant, Molly's, and hired a kick-ass wine director, Lisa Redwine, and a top chef named Brian.

Pagano had been a regular attendee and proponent of many a great wine dinner that I threw for the San Diego regulars when he ran the Del Mar Marriott. So when the nexus of wine and tech was happening in San Diego, it was a natural pairing. We agreed to make it a blowout and put his team to the test. And they rose to the occasion. Steve, as usual, was the perfect host, letting us take over the place, and stress testing the staff their first month on the job.

At that dinner, which was a turning point for me in many ways, were the likes of Dan Farber, then of CNET and now of Salesforce; Craig Walker, then of GrandCentral and now of Dialpad; Christine Herron, who is now with Intel Capital; Mike Sigal who was a partner involved in DEMO and now onto his next startup in microfinance; John Furrier who now guides Silicon Angle; Steve Howe, then of Earthlink and now of ROLL, Inc., and a cast of many others both in VoIP and new tech, as well as media.

At the urging of Mike Sigal and Chris Shipley, I would work with friends in the restaurant world, and the Andy Wine Dinners became the hottest ticket at DEMO for the next few years. It was the event you couldn't buy your way into. You had to be invited.

I still feel Oren's post summed up the first DEMO Dinner...That's why after reading it, I think it's time for another one of those dinners.......

But back to the big "industry" shows like VON. They simply went away in many people's minds and had been replaced by the company only shows. In VoIP the events like ClueCon, put on by the team from FreeSwitch every summer in Chicago is an excellent example of the community. So is Astricon, that's put on by the folks at Digium and of course TAD Summit, which Alan Quayle so artfully stages in Lisbon in November.

These events have the feel of EComm which was first started by Surj Patel, and then carried on by Lee Dryburgh. They're small, focused and you have the time to catch up with the people you need to see .

Last week I went to ZOOMTOPIA, put on by ZOOM. This month it will be ConnectCentral, put on by RingCentral.

In November it will be DreamForce, staged by SalesForce. Heck, if I were silly enough, it would be Oracle World this week. The show is so big Oracle pays the city of San Francisco to shut down Howard Street for a few blocks surrounding Moscone Center. That's something that doesn't even happen in Las Vegas during CES, though some would say getting around Las Vegas is harder than ever with CES becoming so big. These two events are far from small though, as their respective eco-systems are significant enough to warrant their own events. But unlike the CES type shows, they are single-purposed and designed to do one thing-spur greater use of the company's own technology and services.

To me, the intimacy of ZOOMTOPIA made it a hit. About 400 Zoomers where there. We all came to learn what would be new from the video conferencing platform I use when I need remote face to face group meetings. For other group and scheduled calls, I use UberConference, as it's so simple. At ZOOMTOPIA I got to share my likes and dislikes about the "improvements" they keep making, some of which are the reasons I abandoned WebEx for ZOOM.

At Zoom's event, I also got to see what's new in room-based video screen, as well as had the time to catch up with Scott Wharton, my former client at Vidtel, who is now kicking it at Logitech where he runs their video products group. That level of intimacy, where Scott and I could catch up for 30 minutes without interruption, doesn't exist at the large trade shows or super conferences where everyone is looking for the next person they need to meet.

To me, these gathering provide a great way to learn what's really happening. For ZOOM based on their announcements they are heading deeper into the enterprise and likely planning for an IPO in the next 18-24 months.

I'll be in SF during Ring Central's event, so perhaps it's time to "get the band back together" and have another dinner????? We are long overdue...